Characterization of the spatio-temporal patterns of global fire activity using satellite imagery for the period April 1992 to March 1993

Aim This paper describes the characteristics of the spatio-temporal distrib ution of vegetation fires as detected from satellite data for the 12 months April 1992 to March 1993. Location Fires are detected daily at a spatial resolution of 1 km for all l and areas of the globe. Methods From the fire location information a daily gridded product at 0.5 d egrees by 0.5 degrees has been constructed. Two methods of characterizing t he spatio-temporal pattern of vegetation fires are discussed. The first app lies empirical orthogonal function analysis to the monthly series of gridde d data. The second approach defines and extracts a number of spatial and te mporal parameters from the gridded product. The descriptive parameters extr acted are used in a cluster analysis in order to group cells with similar c haracteristics into a small number of classes. Results Using daily global satellite observations, it is possible to charac terize the spatial and temporal variability in fire activity. Most of this variability is within the tropical belt, where the majority of fire activit y is concentrated, nonetheless fire was also detected in temperate and bore al regions. The period in which fire occurred varied from region to region. Parameterization provided a very synthetic view of this variability facili tating regional intercomparison. Clustering identifies five classes of fire activity, each of which can be associated with particular climatic conditi ons, vegetation types and land-use. Main conclusions Global monitoring of vegetation fire from satellite is pos sible. The analysis provides a coherent, consistent and synoptic view of gl obal fire activty with one data set. The type of information extracted can be of use in global atmospheric chemistry modelling and for studying the ro le of fire in relation to global change issues.